Catalogue entry

Description

On a large sheet of photographic paper hanging from the wall and rolled out on the floor is the life-size reproduction of a male figure wearing a seventeenth-century costume.1 Departing from this beholder's eye are four black elastic threads, which circumscribe ten canvases scattered on the ground in a square area (two of them are reversed). On each of the canvases the artist has outlined a different drawing of visual beams. The group of canvases is surrounded by a subtle gold dust perimeter. An eleventh reversed canvas is propped up against the wall, half-hidden by the photograph.
The canvases and the drawings that crowd the visual field of the protagonist – a sort of anonymous stand-in for the author – constitute a “secret garden” (evoked by the Latin title) which encompasses the potential becoming of an image. The trajectories of the gaze – materialized by the elastic threads and featured in the beams of straight lines outlined on the canvases – that enter this mysterious garden end up becoming lost in their self-multiplication: the secret of the work remains impracticable to the gaze.
If the canvases foreshadow hypothetical paintings to be, the gold dust, on its part, refers to the inaccessible and ideal dimension of the work of art: “The gold – the artist says – recalls the mythical object, it contains the sublime; it is the elementary indication of the tribute to the imponderable tending towards the absolute".1
The path of the gaze in search of an image alludes to the becoming of the work itself. Or, as the artist writes in a comment to this work: "The work has no date, rather, it has data: it interrupts the theory of the definitions and it contemplates the themes of the works to come. The greenhouse of ideas and the secret garden of images become muddled in the before and the after of the invisible rules of a drawing".2

1 G. Paolini interviewed by C. Grenier, in Flash Art 3 (Milan, French edition), Spring, 1984, p. 40; republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 189, with incorrect details in the bibliographical source.
2 G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini. Hortus clausus, exhibition catalogue, Lucerne, Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1981, n. pag.

Sources

Figure from Pierre Descargues, Traités de perspective (Paris: Editions du Chêne, 1976), p. 102 (Abraham Bosse, “Les perspecteurs”).

Exhibitions

1981	Lucerne Kunstmuseum Luzern, Giulio Paolini. Hortus clausus, 29 March - 3 May, not repr., with text on the exhibited works by M. Kunz n. pag.
1990	New York, SteinGladstone Gallery, Giulio Paolini. Hortus clausus. A Work from 1981, from 13 January.

Artist’ writings

•	G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini. Hortus clausus, exhibition catalogue, Lucerne, Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1981, n. pag.; republished in Giulio Paolini, vol. Image/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), p. 52.
•	G. Paolini in the interview with C. Grenier, in Flash Art 3 (Milan, French edition), Spring, 1984, p. 40; republished in Italian in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 189 (with incorrect details in the bibliographical source).
•	G. Paolini in conversation with Bruno Corà, as part of the conference titled “Dopopaesaggio. Figure e misure del giardino”, Certaldo, Castello di S. Maria Novella, 3-4 February 1996, published in Dopopaesaggio. Figure e misure del giardino, edited by M. Scotini, L. Vecere (Siena: Maschietto & Musolino, 1996), pp. 79, 96.

Bibliography

•	L. Ballerini, M. Pesaresi, “Exercise Before Death”, in Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves. Explorations in Italian Art, exhibition catalogue, Sydney, Power Gallery, University of Sydney (Milan: Electa, 1982), p. 17, not repr.
•	Giulio Paolini, vol. Images/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), repr. pp. 52-53.
•	A. Mammì, I. Panicelli, “Giulio Paolini. Bibliografia”, in Giulio Paolini. La Casa di Lucrezio, exhibition catalogue, Spoleto, Palazzo Rosari Spada (Casalecchio di Reno: Grafis Edizioni, 1984), pp. 22, 26, not repr.; republished in Markus Lüpertz, Giulio Paolini: figure, colonne, finestre, exhibition catalogue, Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli, 1986, p. 81, not repr.
•	S. Vertone, “Non tutto qui”, in Giulio Paolini. “Tutto qui”, exhibition catalogue, Ravenna, Pinacoteca Comunale, Loggetta Lombardesca (Ravenna: Agenzia Editoriale Essegi, 1985), pp. 35, 40, repr. no. III p. 34.
•	M. Scholz-Hänsel, “Das imaginäre Museum Giulio Paolinis”, in Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1986, vol. 2, p. 12, not repr.
•	G. Paolini, Suspense. Breve storia del vuoto in tredici stanze (Florence: Hopeful Monster editore, 1988), repr. p. 37.
•	E. Grazioli, “Protagonisti e influenze”, in F. Alfano Miglietti, Arte in Italia 1960-1985 (Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore, 1988), repr. p. 215.
•	F. Poli, Giulio Paolini (Turin: Lindau, 1990), p. 30; republished in Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri (Graz/Ostfildern-Ruit: Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum and Cantz Verlag, 1998), p. 49, repr. no. 101.
•	Giulio Paolini al Palazzo della Ragione, exhibition catalogue, Padua, Salone del Palazzo della Ragione (Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1995), repr. p. 36.
•	D. von Drathen, “Giulio Paolini. Der blinde Blick des Sehers”, in Künstler. Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst 33, no. 7 (Munich: Weltkunst-Bruckmann Verlag, 1996), p. 3, repr. p. 9; republished in Id., Vortex of silence. Proposition for an art criticism beyond aesthetic categories (Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2004), pp. 221-222, repr.
•	Dopopaesaggio. Figure e misure del giardino, edited by M. Scotini and L. Vecere (Siena: Associazione Culturale Castello di Santa Maria Novella and Maschietto & Musolino, 1996), pp. 79 (the work is mentioned by B. Corà in conversation with Paolini), 96 (statement by Paolini), repr. p. 97.
•	Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, op. cit. (Ostfildern-Ruit: 1998), repr. p. 27.
•	M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 442 p. 452, col. repr.
•	D. Lancioni, “Un enigma in prospettiva”, in Giulio Paolini. Gli uni e gli altri. L'enigma dell'ora, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Milan: Skira editore, 2010), col. repr. p. 23.
•	Collezione Christian Stein. Una storia dell'arte italiana / A History of Italian Art (Valencia-Lugano-Milan: IVAM Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Museo Cantonale d'Arte and Mondadori Electa, 2010), col. repr. p. 306.
•	Arte povera 2011, edited by G. Celant (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2011), col. repr. no. 322.
•	J. Lageira, “Giulio Paolini. Ut pictura poesis”, in Id., Regard oblique. Essais sur la perception (Brussels: La Lettre volée, 2013), pp. 103, 106-107, repr. p. 105.
•	I. Bernardi, “Il giuoco delle parti”, in Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Rome, MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma and London, Whitechapel Gallery (Macerata: Quodlibet Edizioni, 2014), p. 92, repr. p. 87.
•	Paolini. I Grandi illustrati del Corriere della Sera. Arte contemporanea – I protagonisti 8, edited by F. Gualdoni (Milan: RCS MediaGroup S.p.a., 2022), pp. 21, 60, col. repr. pp. 60-61.

Hortus clausus, 1981